


a still hour beneath the sun

by mswyrr



Category: The Tempest - Shakespeare
Genre: Femdom, Genderqueer Character, Other, Shakespeare, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-05
Updated: 2012-01-05
Packaged: 2017-10-28 23:04:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/313147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mswyrr/pseuds/mswyrr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Do you love me, master?</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	a still hour beneath the sun

**Author's Note:**

> **warning:** Consent made dubious by the power relationship between the characters.  
>  **author's notes:** (1) This fic is based off the 2010 Julie Taymor adaptation of The Tempest, starring Helen Mirren as Prospera and Ben Whishaw as Ariel, (2) I owe much thanks to inkhead for beta reading  & encouragement! <3, and (3) I've used a gender neutral pronoun for Ariel because zie is genderqueer.

  


_Ariel: Do you love me, master?_  
Prospera: Dearly, my delicate Ariel.  
\--The Tempest, Act 4: Scene 1

Ariel's masters left their mark on hir. By their hands, zie was changed. When they had gone, zie danced through time much as before, untouched as seasons passed, the earth decaying and being reborn beneath hir feet. But hir memory bound hir to them still.

Pine branches whispered above hir head. At the sound, Ariel remembered Syrcorax, who had imprisoned hir, but not been so cruel as to keep hir from the touch of the air altogether.

_She said: "Wicked creature! I will make thee a stone."_

_Ariel wept, hir face to the ground, fingers clutching at the hem of hir master's grey cloak. The taste of dust on was on hir lips._

_"Master, please."_

_Ariel saw pity mingle with Sycorax's anger, and so she made hir a tree, whose fingers could brush the sky._

A dragonfly fluttered its wings near hir, glimmering green and blue, and darted off. The memory fled, and Ariel gave chase.

Ariel passed many seasons in the wonders of the world without a thought for the past and then, while dancing with a pair of swans, zie remembered Prospera.

_Summers with Prospera were the gladdest time. While the sun blew hot on the earth, Ariel rode the warm currents up and up. In cooler climes zie played with clouds, painting their white mist on the naked sky._

_Ariel went higher and higher still, while hir master sunk low with her child, shrinking from the hot sun and the burning land. They swam in the sea, nude as angels. They crept below ground into their dark cell and slept across from each other on their long, low bed, exhaling the fever the sun had put in their blood._

_Ariel came down to dance upon their hot breath as zie had danced on the air. Beneath hir, Prospera's warm breasts lie exposed as she breathed out her heat, her heart burning inside of her, the sun of her body's small universe. Her pinkish brown nipples tightened at a kiss of Ariel's cool lips, her skin pickling under airy fingers._

_Prospera awoke, stretching. "Seek thou to sport with me, lusty spirit?" she asked, her voice stern. The first time zie had been caught touching hir master's body, Ariel had cried, cowering low, afraid of punishment. Prospera had drawn Ariel up to her, running rough, warm fingers over Ariel's smooth back and saying hush, hush. Then Prospera taught Ariel to play games of passion that none of the other animals knew._

_Ariel smiled, circling Prospera's navel with a delicate finger. "I would in all things please thee, master."_

_Prospera laughed. "Fear not, delicate Ariel. I will put thy obedience to good use." She reached across the wide bed, sparing a quiet word for her daughter, sending the girl into a deep sleep. Then Prospera spread her arms to welcome Ariel, who came to rest against the furnace of hir master's body, trapped by her hot flesh, pinned, stroked, kissed. In the merry capture of hir master's arms, Ariel knew a freedom untaught by the open air._

_Prospera's breasts tasted of sea water. Yet in them Ariel found a sweetness to rival any the bees did suck, and in the flower between Prospera's thighs Ariel tasted greater sweetness still. After their labors, Prospera slept again and Ariel reclined between her and Miranda, alive with joy, willingly trapped between these hot creatures of flesh and blood, bone and earth._

In the cool night sky, Ariel remembered and wondered: Does my Prospera yet live? Does she love me still?

Below hir a fish leapt and snatched a firefly from the air, its green light snapped up in quick jaws, the water below a ripple. Ariel laughed and spun through the air, singing the firefly a cheerful lament.

 

 _I would like to be the air_  
that inhabits you for a moment  
only.  
\--Margaret Atwood, "Variations on the Word Sleep"


End file.
